


the horizon tries but it's just not as kind on the eyes

by lapoubelle



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Fluff, Pride and Prejudice discourse, bc i can only write fluff, match making cats, so fluffy i had to take a break from writing a few scenes, the neighbours au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8944207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoubelle/pseuds/lapoubelle
Summary: “Is this some sort of long-winded plot where you trained your cat to sneak into my apartment so you can eventually turn me into your own personal barista?”Clarke nods seriously, putting her mug down on the counter top. “Yeah. Basically. You’re in it for the long haul now, Bellamy.” or, Clarke's cat match-makes our two favourite dorks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title borrowed from Arctic Monkey's _Arabella_.

This is the third morning in a row where Bellamy woke up with a draft over his head. Glancing up at the window behind his bed frame, he glares at the open window which he knows he definitely closed the night before. Next, he directs his glare to the black cat he knows would be sitting at the foot of his bed. 

The first time it happened, it scared the living day lights out of him. Now he’s accustomed to seeing the black ball of fur licking at her paws while looking at him with disinterested eyes. 

The staring match continues. 

Bellamy loses—as always. Artie (short for Artemis, as Clarke drunkenly told him once) hisses as Bellamy finally caves and blinks. At this part of their routine, Bellamy knows the cat’s going to let up on hissing only when Bellamy picks her up and carries her out to her owner. 

Sighing, he tosses his covers off and locates a pair of running pants. Without bothering for a shirt, he picks up the hissing fur ball until it finally snuggles into his chest with a content meow. Bellamy narrows his eyes at her, casting a wary glance at the cat before leaving his apartment.

Two apartments down, Bellamy knocks on Clarke’s door. Hearing clumsy footsteps, Clarke opens the door and Bellamy is reminded of why this morning arrangement of theirs isn’t really that inconvenient for him. 

Because, well, his neighbour is kind of really freaking cute. Especially in the mornings. Where she’s still blinking sleepily, her hair in a braid loosened by sleep, her too-big pyjama shirt barely clinging on one shoulder. Not that it’s _a thing_ or anything. She smiles up at him, and he can’t help but smile back in return. Not a thing at all. 

Then the cat-from-hell meows, demanding their absolute attention again. Bellamy clears his throat. “Should I be worried that she’s developing an attachment to my bed?”

Clarke blinks, her eyebrows raising a fraction of a millimetre before she shrugs, reaching for the cat still perched in Bellamy’s cradle. “Maybe invest in a better lock?” 

Before Clarke could reach her, Artie jumps out of Bellamy’s arms. Using Clarke’s arm as a jumping platform, she leaps down onto the floor, her claws clinking against the laminate floors as she paddles away, tail bopping along behind her. They both watch her disappear into her bedroom. 

“She clearly doesn’t like either of us.”

“She loves me.” The petulant pout on her face is exaggerated and comical. 

“Only because you’re the hand that feeds her.”

Her eyes narrow, hand finding the door. “See you tomorrow morning, Blake.” 

Clarke hears Bellamy’s laugh down the hallway before she her door clicks shut. 

It takes another four days straight of Artie inviting herself over at Bellamy’s before Bellamy is given a spare key by Clarke. And another two days after that for Bellamy to get accustomed to using Clarke’s coffee machine. And another three days after that for Clarke to begrudgingly ask Bellamy how come the coffee he brews tastes so much better when she’s using the same machine and coffee beans. (He answers with a wink, and a refusal to reveal his super coffee-making abilities.) 

Eventually, they’re at a point where it’s normal for Bellamy to be spending a Saturday morning lounging around on Clarke’s couch after he’s dropped off Artie. 

This morning, with Artie content by his hip and Clarke stretched out next to him, they’re watching a Parks and Rec re-run and Clarke is determinedly convincing him that Terry/Jerry/Gary is the most normal character in the whole show. 

“How do you think Terry got such a hot, wholesome wife?” 

Bellamy considers it for a minute. “Maybe he was really hot in college and let himself go?” 

Clarke snorts, pushing her toes under his thigh as she pulls her blanket free from the cushions. “Sounds fairly normal to me, old man.”

At that, Bellamy yanks her blankets off as payback, the sound of Clarke’s protests about being cold lost on his ears. 

They’ve also taken to texting. Or, Clarke has taken to sending picture updates to Bellamy whenever Artie does something she thinks is cool. Which mainly involves Artie finding new ways to twist her body around to lick herself. 

Bellamy’s having lunch with Octavia on their weekly Tuesday afternoon catch-up date when it finally happens. In the middle of Octavia relaying her and Lincoln’s plans to visit his family over the long weekend, his phone dings with a text from Clarke. 

It’s a selfie of her and Artie, with Artie’s wet and covered in bubbles, staring grumpily at the camera as Clarke takes the photo with a grin. It is cute, okay. So Bellamy saves the photo with a swipe of his thumb, not noticing Octavia’s raised eyebrows. 

“Was that Clarke, the hot neighbour?” 

Bellamy looks up from his phone, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as he sheepishly nods. 

“Still denying any plausible feelings?”

This time, Bellamy glares. “There’s nothing to deny, as these so called feelings are nonexistent.”

Octavia huffs, already turning her focus back on her lunch as Bellamy locks his phone. “Oh, well, I’m sorry for conjuring up the idea that you might have a thing for the girl you constantly talk about. And not to mention, probably the only girl you text.”

“First of all, how heteronormative is that. Second of all, I text a lot of people. I text you.”

“The only time you ever text me is to tell me where you want to have lunch on Tuesdays.”

“That still counts.” Bellamy marks his point by pointing his fork at her, chicken speared in and all. 

“It doesn’t, don’t be immature.”

Her brother responds by sticking his tongue out. 

Octavia decides to try another approach, because her brother is the worst at feelings. “Do you like talking to her?”

Bellamy considers it. He does like talking to Clarke. Talking to her is easy, it’s something Bellamy doesn’t have to think about. Everything about Clarke is just so simple and easy, and it just makes sense. 

Oh. 

The realisation must have shown on his face, because a slow smile starts to grow on Octavia and Bellamy suddenly feels uneasy. 

“I hate you.”

“You like her!” A few heads turn at Octavia’s squeal, but Bellamy can’t be bothered to shush her because holy shit he likes Clarke. 

In retrospect, it makes sense. He’s always found Clarke attractive, but he wrote it off in a way that one would find a random stranger attractive in passing. He figured it would go away eventually. He didn’t realize that it never really did, because being with Clarke was something he never gave much thought to. That should’ve probably been a red flag too, actually. The way that he naturally gravitated to Clarke, finding her presence nice and comfortable and warm.

Shit. 

“I hate you.”

Octavia grins. 

__________

Repeat: Bellamy sucks at feelings. 

He’s the worst. 

But only because he’s so full of feelings that he honestly doesn’t know how to express it and let it all go. So yeah. He’s pretty shitty with them. 

Naturally, he pretends his sudden realisation regarding his feelings about a particular neighbour of his didn’t actually happen. And just goes about his every day routine. Life is normal. Seriously. It’s all good. 

(It totally wasn’t.)

That coping mechanism works up until a week later, he wakes to an empty spot in the midst of his crumpled bed sheets at the foot of his bed. It’s almost strange, not seeing the black cat licking at her paws, waiting for him to wake up and take her back to her owner. 

Well fuck. 

He’s grown accustomed to spending mornings with Clarke. It’s a weekday, he should be letting himself into Clarke’s apartment by now, toting Artie in one arm and his mug in another. He’s grown used to starting the coffee machine and get the brew going before he slips back out to take a shower at his own apartment, only to return later to fix their respective coffees. 

He doesn’t need Artie to get in. Technically. But she’s his ticket to get into Clarke’s apartment without it being super weird and having to acknowledge that they’re a part of each other’s everyday routine. What’s his excuse now? 

Listlessly, Bellamy gets out of bed and tries to look for Artie around his bedroom and living room but to no avail. 

Giving up, he’s about to get into the shower when he hears his phone vibrate. 

He tries to squelch down the hope that it’s Clarke, but it’s fruitless when he sees the cat emoji he uses in place of her actual name. 

In the message is a picture of Artie posed to look like she’s holding a mug with an accompanying message that reads: 

_Artie may no longer need your bed, but we still need your coffee :(_

He can’t stop the grin slowly spreading across his face. Yeah. He totally has a thing for his super cool neighbour. 

Forgetting his sad attempts at trying to find a routine sans Clarke and Artie, he’s out the door within seconds, grin still plastered on. 

Clarke is standing in her kitchen, mug in hand, staring at her coffee maker as if it has personally offended her, when she hears him enter. She spins around, a smile slowly forming on her lips. “You’re here!” 

Her relieved tone makes Bellamy feel all sorts of things.

“Is this some sort of long-winded plot where you trained your cat to sneak into my apartment so you can eventually turn me into your own personal barista?”

Clarke nods seriously, putting her mug down on the counter top. “Yeah. Basically. You’re in it for the long haul now, Bellamy.”

Bellamy raises his hands to motion acceptance, and Clarke grins back. Making his way around her kitchen island to stand next to her, he gets to work on starting the coffee. All the while, Clarke sits herself next to Artie on the counter, preferring to sit back and watch him. Bellamy thanks all deities that he has the excuse of focusing on the coffee machine rather than looking at her, because Clarke wears flannel sleep shorts to bed and not much else in the way of pants, and he’d really rather not get an eyeful of her bare legs this early in the morning when he, himself, is only wearing a pair of joggers and not much else in terms of a shirt. 

When the smell of coffee starts to waft in the air, this is usually when they both head back to their respective bathrooms to get ready for the day. But this time around, Clarke remains sitting on her island and Bellamy decides to lean on her counter, opposite her, content in watching Clarke run her fingers through Artie’s fur. 

Clarke asks him about his dissertation and he responds eagerly. He, in turn, asks her about the gallery and their upcoming exhibits. It’s easy, and it’s good. 

Finally, when they have their mugs filled to the brim with coffee, Clarke says it. 

“You know, you don’t need Artie to come in here every morning, right?”

She’s not looking at him, instead choosing to keep her eyes on her mug. 

“I--” Bellamy starts, but fails to find the rest of his words. “Okay.” 

Clarke finally looks up, peers at him for a considerable amount of time. “You’re always welcome here, Bellamy.” 

He nods, one hand finding the counter top to clench while he tries to be nonchalant and sips from his own mug. “Cool.” Oh yeah, Bellamy is totally _cool_. 

Clarke is grinning now, obviously more comfortable in the conversation once she’s established that Bellamy’s on the same page. She jumps off the counter and suddenly she’s really close to a bare-chested Bellamy. 

She doesn’t back away. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a mess in the mornings.”

Flirting—nice, okay, Bellamy can do flirting. “I did notice, actually. Why do you think I keep coming back here to make you coffee? Just doing some public service.” Bellamy’s smirking. 

And in that insane moment, they were both just there, in her kitchen, smiling at each other. 

But then Artie purrs, breaking the silence, causing the two to shift back and blink. 

The fucking cat strikes again. 

It’s easy again after that, without the pretense of dropping off Artie in the mornings. They’re back to their regular routine. With Bellamy coming in to start the coffee before Clarke can fully function outside the warm cocoon of her blankets and leaving back to his apartment to prepare for the day. They converge back again in her kitchen, Clarke dutifully watching Bellamy put their coffee together once they’ve both stepped out of the shower. Once they have their mugs, Clarke makes to finish getting ready to head out to either her studio or the gallery and Bellamy sets to leave for school or the library where he likes to work on his dissertation. It’s nice and familiar, and so fucking domestic it hurts. The only thing it really needs to be branded as a Hallmark family movie is for Bellamy to reach over and plant her a goodbye kiss as they part ways. 

To Artie’s credit, the cat is good. Three weeks of failing to show up at Bellamy’s apartment in the early hours of the day, she starts to show up at his apartment at any given time. This leads to Clarke coming over to his apartment, with the excuse of collecting Artie but it’s for naught as she ends up staying for take-out and watching movies on the couch, feet propped up on Bellamy’s lap. 

“I know you have this weird thing for Keira Knightley, but you can’t honestly tell me you liked her version of Pride and Prejudice better.”

“Fine, okay. I get what you mean, they totally botched the love reveal scene, but movie itself is a piece of art, Bellamy! The colours, the sets, the accurate regency era fashion? So good,” Clarke declares, stabbing her box of chicken lo mein with her chopsticks to emphasize her point. “Plus, hell yeah, Keira Knightley is gorgeous.”

“But you can’t argue that Colin Firth’s version wins for accuracy,” Bellamy points out. 

“Oh yeah, no arguments there. But still. The movie is a feast for the eyes.”

Bellamy huffs a laugh. “This is where your strong opinions on art and my need for accurately depicted book to movie adaptations clash.” 

“Eat your dumpling and put the Keira Knightley version on.”

Bellamy concedes, only because Clarke offers him the last dumpling and because finding a good quality BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series on the internet is too much work when the Keira Knightley version is available on Netflix. 

Clarke and Bellamy spend equally the same amount of time in each other’s apartments. Always drifting in and out, letting Artie dictate where they’re going to be for the rest of the day (on weekends) or night (on weekdays). Soon enough, they were spending nearly every day together, catching up on each other’s days, ordering take out or Bellamy cooking when he finds out Clarke is only good at baking and not actual cooking.

It becomes such a natural thing. To the point that when Bellamy is in search for a book, Clarke’s apartment is also part of his target locations when searching, without any thought. He eventually finds his copy of Beckett’s _Waiting for Godot_ stacked between Clarke’s copy of Chaucer’s _The Canterbury Tales_ and a “How to take professional photos of your cat” book for dummies that Bellamy found in a hole-in-a-wall book store one day. 

On one of Bellamy’s day offs, with his lecture cancelled, he finds himself sprawled on his back on Clarke’s couch, with a purring Artie sitting on his chest. Clarke’s out, rushing out the door with no more than a quick good bye and a kiss on Artie’s forehead hours ago. He’s watching a documentary on Discovery Channel that Clarke recorded for him because he had a meeting with his thesis advisor when it aired and Bellamy’s really bad at finding out TV schedules. 

His phone vibrates from somewhere underneath his torso, and he has to dislodge Artie’s tail, draped over his arm, before he locates it. 

It’s a message from Clarke:

_I forgot my laptop charger somewhere at home and I can’t get out of the gallery do u mind bringing it over??_

Before he could reply, she follows with:

 _I think it’s underneath your coffee table_

The implication that “home” to Clarke also includes his apartment is not lost on him, and his chest suddenly feels tight and it’s not because of the cat sitting on him. 

He responds with a _be there in twenty minutes_ , before picking Artie off his chest and plopping her on the floor with no less than a disgruntled meow from the cat. He reaches down to fluff the fur on her head while reaching for the remote he haphazardly threw on the other end of the couch to turn the TV off. 

“Sorry Artie buddy, your owner’s a mess.”

He’s only ever been to Clarke’s gallery a handful of times. The first time wasn’t even because of Clarke (he likes to think of it as “pre-Clarke” days), it was because Octavia forced him to come to Lincoln’s opening exhibit at the gallery. It’s another year later that he drops by the gallery again, this time, to pick Clarke up because she lost track of time while painting in her studio in the gallery and missed the last train home. 

The third and last time he visited the gallery was because Clarke left her phone on his couch where they had breakfast that morning, dropping it off at her desk on his way to campus. She finds it on her desk forty minutes later, not having realized she didn’t have it the whole time, with a sticky note boasting a half-assed drawing of a smiley face. When she picks it up to check the time, she finds that Bellamy changed her lock screen photo to a selfie of him and Artie. She hasn’t changed it since. 

Bellamy figures life will just keep going like this. He can’t really complain. He likes spending time with the girl he’s three quarters in love with and her cat. He’s good. He’s happy. 

What he didn’t count on is how Clarke might be dealing with all of this. 

Mostly because he didn’t think Clarke had an inkling of what _all of this_ is. 

They’re at Bellamy’s apartment. It’s summer time, and the French white-trimmed doors leading to a patio too small for human occupancy are open, allowing the breeze of cool, Californian summers to enter. The breeze is welcome on Bellamy’s warm, tanned, skin, but Clarke finds it chilly. She opts to snuggle against Bellamy, the cool breeze a nice contrast to the warmth radiating from the arm Bellamy has draped over the back of the couch. She practically lets her head drop back when she feels Bellamy’s fingers toying with the hair by her nape, seeking more warmth from the tips of his fingers. 

This time, the TV is off. Bellamy’s reading an article he has to peer review and Clarke is sketching. It’s quiet, only the occasional sound of Bellamy turning pages and the quiet hum of pencil shading in paper permeates through the apartment. Sometimes the soft pitter-patter of Artie’s paws against the laminate floors passes through but are not given much thought by the two. 

That is, until Clarke takes a peek to check on her wandering cat. Artie’s abandoned her spot by the open doors in the living room and has made her way atop Bellamy’s bed, near where her usual entry way is through the window above the head board, resting her head on her paws and taking a slight sniff at the bed covers before closing her eyes. 

“You let Artie up on your bed?” Clarke asks her tone casual, eyes dropping back to her sketch book, but has yet to continue shading. 

Bellamy hums, not looking up from his reading. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

This gets his attention. 

He looks up at her, eyes squinting in the sun light that’s covered the apartment. “Why? She’s always on my bed, that’s literally how this whole thing started.”

Clarke bites her lip to keep from smiling. She lifts her sketchbook off her lap and places it on the coffee table, turning to face Bellamy head on. 

“The problem is that she’s allowed on my bed too.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“And training her out of it will be such a pain when we finally get our shit together and hook up. We’re going to want her out of the bed forever at that point, because she’s just gonna keep interrupting us, I bet.”

Bellamy stares at her, wide eyed and gaping. He tries to say something but ends up choking on air for a little bit before he can get a word out. “Forever?”

Clarke shrugs. She reaches over to toy with the staple holding the sheets of the article he’s reading together. “Depending on how the next few seconds goes, yeah I think so.”

Bellamy lets out a strangled laugh and the hand draped over the back of the couch winds around to clasp the back of her head and bring her closer to his mouth, and Clarke takes hold of the article and drops it off the couch in her quest to sit on his lap. 

They’re both in a middle of a relieved laugh when their mouths meet. It takes a while for them to reposition themselves in proper make-out stance, and when they do it’s pretty fucking great. 

Bellamy’s sucking Clarke’s bottom lip into his mouth, his hands roaming the bare expanse of her back underneath her shirt when they hear a loud meow coming from Bellamy’s room. They break apart, and manage to catch Artie’s tail as she jumps out of the window and presumably back into Clarke’s apartment. 

“I think Artie just gave us her permission to make use of my bed,” Bellamy whispers. 

Clarke laughs against his neck and wraps her hands around his shoulders to allow him to carry them to his bedroom. 

Right after depositing her on the bed and making a spot for himself between her legs, he reaches over to close the window and locks it. 

Can’t have Artie interrupting them this time around.

**Author's Note:**

> all mistakes are mine. i was just so excited to have finished another fic that i didn't bother properly editing it so oops.  
> find me on [tumblr](http://pegschuylerr.tumblr.com).
> 
> p.s. I don't actually think Bellamy's the type to read any of Beckett's works, so pretend that he's reading it for a class or something.


End file.
